Ukrainian drones strike Russian warship in Gulf of Finland in unprecedented Baltic attack

Ukrainian drones struck a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland on Wednesday in what appears to be the first attack on a Russian vessel in an area of the Baltic Sea open to civilian maritime traffic.

Ukraine's SBU security service said it targeted the ship Naro-Fominsk, described as a Buyan-M type small corvette capable of carrying Kalibr and Oniks cruise missiles, as part of a broader drone operation against Russia's Ust-Luga oil export depot on the Baltic coast. Estonia's Defence Minister Martin Herem told public broadcaster ERR that the ship was hit at about 05:30 local time (03:30 GMT) and that smoke was seen coming from it afterwards before it turned back toward St Petersburg.

Several storage tanks at the Ust-Luga terminal are thought to have been hit overnight, with fires visible from across the border in Estonia. Herem said Ukrainian drones attacked the Ust-Luga region from midnight until approximately 06:00, mostly flying close to the Estonian border but within Russian airspace. He added that one drone had briefly entered Estonian airspace from Latvia before heading toward Russia. NATO aircraft based in the Baltic states were airborne at the time, but Herem said it had not been considered safe to destroy the drones.

Finland's Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said the Baltic Sea remained stable and safe with no threat to marine traffic. Finnish defence officials are understood to have stressed to Kyiv that the Gulf is a narrow waterway used by oil tankers and civilian vessels, and is home to subsea data cables. There were also unconfirmed reports of Russian combat helicopters being destroyed.

Military analyst Emil Kastehelmi, co-founder of the Black Bird monitoring group, told the BBC he did not consider the strike a serious escalation. He said "The Baltic Sea fleet has been untouched up to this point," noting that there had seemingly been a window of opportunity for Ukraine and they understandably tried to use it.

The extent of casualties or damage to the Naro-Fominsk remains unclear.